Thursday, May 06, 2010

May Bilog na Hugis Itlog

Watching James Jimenez spar (yet again) with Gus Lagman on TV this morning brought to mind a couple of things:

First: perhaps in true Filipino fashion, we've written the jingles and brought out the nubile dancers to wiggle their booties to the tune, but we haven't done the real grunt work of testing the machines. But hey, just so long as we have the sexy babes, everything will be all right, eh?

Second: the automated election project has not been led by IT people but by lawyers. This has been a recipe for disaster from the beginning. Fundamentally, lawyers believe, truly believe, that reality is pliant and subject to argument. Contrast that with computers where a 1 is a 1 and a 0 is a 0.

If elections fail, there really will be a bilog na hugis itlog: the egg on their faces.